Trial By
by MidnightCereal
Summary: Happy Halloween! Minimal literary candy for all you little ghosts and ghou...wait, what? When? Since when? When? Aww man.


Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Studio Gainax production, its characters created by Hideaki Anno. They say the word, and this story ceases to exist.

A/N: One Hour Oneshot, per DartzIRL's idea.

Trial By

By MidnightCereal

"I can't do this."

"It'll just be for the day. Just until seven or eight. That's all."

"I can't do this."

"The nurse told me they can't find their dad. He's on permanent standby or something. Their grandfather is in a room just down the hall. I think he was at the test, but they won't tell me. I…I'm not Nerv. I don't know-"

"I can't do this."

"She's not going to _bite you_, Shinji, I…please."

"I can't do this."

"I have a little sister, too. And a big sister. And a dad, so _three_ kids. You can handle one for a few hours."

"Not her," he whispered.

"Shinji…" Hikari stepped up and her voice went down. "I'm going to be in that room…" She pointed at the black, blocky numbers on the automatic door. It was Touji's room. "And you're going over there…" She pointed to a row of plastic chairs, the little girl sitting and dawdling. "Now."

Hikari left Shinji in the antiseptic corridor, alone with his fear and Mari Suzahara. At the moment, he couldn't tell if they were different things.

He was walking over, stepping lightly. Don't surprise her. Don't scare her. Don't crush her again.

Shinji gingerly sat next to Mari, who was humming something and staring at the window on the far hospital wall. He joined her, relieved _was she deaf, too?_ at this stay of conversation. Two clouds and six VTOLs zipped past before he caught chocolate eyes and a trenching scar on the edge of his skittish vision. He did the mature and stupid thing and looked to his right and down.

"Wanna see somethin' cool?"

He nodded.

Her legs stopped swinging and she went to the one with the parasitic brace. She loosened it an appropriate amount and gleefully hyper-extended her knee, which looked incredibly inappropriate.

"Doesn't…doesn't that hurt?"

"The doctors gave me something."

"For the pain?"

"Something like that."

* * *

"What happened to your nose?" Shinji made sure to point very close to the bandage and not the bleached skin cutting across her brow and cheek and neck and running down into her shirt.

"A fight."

Shinji slowed. "Someone was making fun of your injuries?"

Her split lip broke up again in a smile. "Not anymore, they won't."

"_They_?" He stopped, but she kept walking further into the rail station. "You could've just ignored them."

"Why?" She looked confused enough for the both of them. "I didn't do anything wrong."

* * *

She stared at the balloons. At the cheeseburger sizzling on her plate. She had the same look after they had gotten out of the theaters. "Isn't this expensive?"

"It's okay."

"So…d'you make a lot of money…" Discretion on an eight year old's face was a beautiful thing. "…doing…what you do…?"

Shinji reached into his pocket, pulled out the receipt from the bank machine, and passed it to her.

"Holy shi-"

* * *

The city burned black in the early evening and slid past the train. They slipped into a ward that was slumped and jagged, supervised by truss-necked cranes.

Mari patted him on the shoulder. "Did you do that?"

She was pointing at a silhouette of a tower that had been bitten in half and maybe cauterized.

"No. That's…" They were the only ones in the car. "That's from the last attack."

"It's like we lost up here."

"Yeah. You could say we did."

"But you stopped it?"

"Yeah."

"How?"

He laughed for some reason. "I don't really know how. I just…came back and it was all going terribly…and I started fighting."

The look of confusion returned and pitched tent. "Came…came back?"

"Oh. I wasn't there for the beginning of it. I had-"

"Why?"

"Hmm?" He muttered, hoping the question would change. It did. She wanted to know the first time. She needed to know the second.

"I said, why?"

"The short answer? I don't know. I couldn't be there. It was just getting to me. I think it was making me sick?"

She shrugged. And waited.

"But I couldn't just leave everyone, and that was what I'd realized. Someone talked to me, and I took ownership. Do you understand?"

"Yeah."

She wasn't looking at him anymore. Her legs dangled.

* * *

Why did they get off here?

"I want to see something."

He looked around. Up. There wasn't much to see. And what was there to see should have been blocked off. Half the city seemed to be burned or bombed out. Maybe they were running out of caution tape.

"I don't think it's safe here, Mari."

"Hold on," she said. Her voice echoed.

Shit.

"Mari?!"

She had virtually no cartilage in her left knee. Where the hell could she have gone?

There was scuffling across the street, a flash of skin and plastic in the shadows of a scuttled shop. He ran there, stepped into the store and stifled a sneeze, another one, and then just gave up. Too hard. Too much dust.

Light poured into an embattled stairwell behind the shattered glass counter. Shinji was creaking and crunching upwards. His head poked into the second ruined floor, and he almost went back down until he heard scratching above him. He stormed up two more dark broken stories, tripping over debris while choking on dust and panic.

The ceiling for the fifth floor moved across his eyes like clumps of orange sorbet and…oh. The roof.

Mari was on the other side of it. Between them the ribs of the building were exposed as were the gaping spaces between.

"It's okay," she said. "I've been here before."

"They let you…" He shook his head. "We should go."

"Isn't it nice?"

He looked out over New Blight City. "It's very nice, Mari."

"The view's better over here."

"I'll take your word for it." He stepped forward, feeling the roof slump beneath him. A wonderful feeling. "And it's nice. Can we go?"

She smiled, and he thought for a second that was all she'd do. Mari worked her way around an empty space and stepped onto a beam that look half buckled. He could have tested his assumption by meeting her halfway but…yeah.

Mari stepped off of the beam and had the nerve to limp the rest of the way to him.

"I don't think Touji would forgive me if anything happened to you."

"Sure he would." Her head swept up with the warm breeze. "Wanna see somethin' cool?"

He nodded.

She pushed him.

He looked behind him. His hands shot out to break his fall against the thin black air. No, up. Which turned into down and then up again. Shadows, concrete and sky twisting around him and as they began to bleed into each other he had to admit that _did_ look awfully co

End of Trial By

A/N: I'm proofreading the freehand draft for the final chapter of NTR. Like, right now.


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